Raydium, the largest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange (DEX) on Solana by cumulative trading volume, has officially launched LaunchLab, its long-awaited memecoin and token creation platform designed to compete with the popular PumpFun.
The announcement sparked a strong market reaction, sending Raydium’s native RAY altcoin up 8% in the past 24 hours.
LaunchLab allows users to easily launch tokens that integrate directly with Raydium’s liquidity pools. It also allows third-party platforms to set custom transaction fees, a move that could attract new developers and creators to Raydium’s ecosystem.
The launch marks a clear shift in the rivalry that has developed between Raydium and Pump.fun. The two platforms previously had a profitable relationship: tokens created on Pump.fun were funneled to Raydium’s AMM after passing the $69,000 market cap threshold, generating significant traffic and fees for Raydium.
However, the dynamic changed on March 20 when Pump.fun launched its own decentralized exchange, PumpSwap, cutting its dependency on Raydium and becoming a direct competitor. PumpSwap’s debut was explosive, reaching $2.5 billion in trading volume in just 10 days. According to DefiLlama, its all-time volume is now over $31.7 billion.
LaunchLab and Raydium are fighting back. While similar in functionality to Pump.fun, LaunchLab claims to be introducing a new mechanism that allocates 25% of transaction fees to buying back RAY, potentially putting deflationary pressure on the token.
Rumors of the LaunchLab’s development began circulating last month, signaling Raydium’s intention to regain momentum in Solana’s fast-moving memecoin economy.
*This is not investment advice.
